guitz

abacab

sjd
Hi
Think you're looking at a classic square wave here.
Try 'Classic Square' from the '03-Leads' section of Rapture, or something similar.
 
Cheers

You are right about the square wave.  I was curious and took a closer look at the z3ta+ patch "Prophet 5 Sync Lead" and noticed that with oscillator #1, "Vintage Saw 1", it made no difference to the sound where the level was set. Oscillator #2 is "Octaved Square 1", and produces the sound.
 
This is an interesting sounding patch, I believe it is because of the "Sync" between the two oscillators. Change the oscillator #1 group to anything besides "Sync" and the sound of oscillator#2 goes crazy.
 
I tried the "Classic Square" in Rapture, as well as something similar in Pentagon, "Sq Simple Lead" (this is a vastly underrated synth, IMHO). They are both great square wave programs, much warmer and more realistic than that provided by Groovesynth. 
 
I have decided to dig further into the z3ta+ "Prophet 5 Sync Lead", because something interesting is going on here, and I still have a lot to learn, LOL.  Besides, I was a Cars freak back in the early 80's and owned nearly all of their albums on vinyl. I love this sound!
 
Oh yeah. I also stumbled upon an article at Harmony Central by Obi-wan-Craig Anderton-kenobi, "Article: All About Synthesizer “Hard Sync” :-)
http://www.harmonycentral.com/articles/all-about-synthesizer-hard-sync
 
Time to go to school!

 
that 'prophet 5 sync lead' patch did not remind me of the saw/square/whatever wave sound heard on Just what I needed, ...but it sounded very close to the sounds on 'Lets Go' and others...

True.  I believe it's because of the modulation matrix in the z3ta+ program using velocity to control the osc2 pitch and the filter1 cutoff.  It's a little bit punchy, depending on how hard you strike a key.
 
I said it's probably a starting point.
 
You can adjust to taste.  I watched two different live videos of the band playing that song, one in 1978, the other in 1985, using two different keyboards.  The square wave is dominant, but it is fat and strong.
 
As sjd suggested, try Rapture "Classic Square", or try the Pentagon "Sq Simple Lead" and tweak and add effects to either until you hear what you want. 
 
IMHO the best Sonar included synths to attempt virtual analog with are Pentagon and z3ta+ ... Rapture can do a lot more, but is more complex.

when a band i was in, long ago, used to play Cars songs, my brother used his Sequential Circuits Pro-One (mono synth) and it seemed almost dead-on - mixing triangle and square waves + portamento as suggested. so it seems like even a simple synth could get there for the most part but maybe you'll need to double up etc as i think Greg H used a lot of synths linked and/or played together to get the sounds.